Chapter 8: Backup and Recovery for High Availability Environments

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The sources here are rather limited, and as with most chapters there is heavy reliance on Oracle documentation for Oracle Database 10g.

RMAN: A Primer

• Freeman, Robert, et al. Oracle 9i RMAN Backup and Recovery, Berkeley, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, September 2002.

This is an excellent resource for a foundational understanding of RMAN, with a strong slant toward conceptual understanding and architectural explanation. You might recognize the workshop format, as it is the same one used in our HA book.

Preparing an RMAN Backup Strategy

• Romero, Antonio, et al. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Basics 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

The basics cover configuration of both the permanent configuration parameters and the flashback recovery area setup, particularly Chapter 3.

Backups for the Available Database

• Romero, Antonio, et al. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

Chapter 6 covers media management, more about the flashback recovery area, as well as setting up the auxiliary instance and the snapshot controlfile.

• Romero, Antonio, et al. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Basics 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

Chapter 4 covers the creation and usage of incrementally updated backups. This chapter also covers backing up the flashback recovery area to tape.

Backup Housekeeping

• Romero, Antonio, et al. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Basics 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

Chapter 6 covers maintenance operations.

Performing Recovery

• Romero, Antonio, et al. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Basics 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

See Chapter 5 for straightforward examples of restore and recovery operations with RMAN.

• Romero, Antonio, et al. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Basics 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003. Chapter 8 covers topics such as recovering to a new host and block media recovery.

Media Management Considerations

• Freeman, Robert, et al. Oracle 9i RMAN Backup and Recovery, Berkeley, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, September 2002.

This book has excellent coverage of linking RMAN to media management on multiple vendor products, including Veritas Netbackup, Legato Networker, HP Omniback, and Tivoli Data Protection. The exact nature of the operations is explained conceptually in Chapter 4.

RMAN and Data Guard

• Freeman, Robert, et al. Oracle 9i RMAN Backup and Recovery, Berkeley, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, September 2002.

Chapter 17 provides excellent examples of creating physical standby databases in Oracle9i( not much has changed).

• Schupmann, Viv, et al. Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration, 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

Appendix D covers the creation of the physical standby using RMAN.

RMAN and RAC

• Freeman, Robert, et al. Oracle 9i RMAN Backup and Recovery, Berkeley, McGraw-Hill/Osborne, September 2002.

Chapter 18 covers the critical information concerning RMAN and RAC, including a detailed account of archivelog setup in a pre-OCFS world. There are two excellent workshops that cover duplicating from RAC to a single-node database, and creating a single-node standby from a RAC database.

• Austin, David and Bauer, Mark. Oracle Real Application Clusters Administrator's Guide, 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

Chapters 6 and 7 both provide in-depth coverage of setting up RMAN on your cluster, and provide significant coverage of archivelog backup and maintenance.

Oracle and Split Mirror Technologies

• Romero, Antonio. Oracle^® Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1), Oracle Corporation, December 2003.

Chapter 7 covers the basics of using split mirrors for backups. However, this model assumes that you are merely using the split mirror as the backup itself, instead of connecting to this backup and taking an RMAN media backup.

• Vengurlekar, Nitin, Maestas, Steve, and Haisley, Stephan. 'Exploiting EMC Timefinder and Oracle Recovery Manager,' Oracle white paper. Available online from: http://otn.oracle.com/deploy/availability/pdf/RMAN8i_BCV.pdf. [Referenced February 17, 2004]

This is the best document on using RMAN to take a backup from a split-mirror backup that is currently available to the public. It references old versions of all software involved, but the principles and concepts are still applicable.

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